Cousins convicted of raping unconscious woman in Antioch 10 years ago

MARTINEZ -- A Contra Costa County jury on Monday found a pair of cousins guilty of raping a 19-year-old woman while she was unconscious in an acquaintance's Antioch apartment in 2002.

The jury deliberated for more than a day before convicting Brian Bickham, 29, of Oakland, and Lorenzo Preston, 28, of Vallejo, of one count each of felony rape of an intoxicated person.

The cousins were among the young men who were hanging out in an apartment in the 2200 block of East San Jose Drive on Aug. 5, 2002, when a then-Pittsburg woman arrived with intentions of meeting up with a female friend, deputy district attorney Derek Butts said.

When the friend didn't show up, the woman stayed to drink alcohol with the men. The last thing she remembered before waking up in the hospital the next day was walking to the bathroom and feeling dizzy, Butts said.

The victim's friend arrived hours later and found the woman in the bathroom unconscious and disrobed. There were "obvious signs" that she had been sexually assaulted, Butts said. Investigators collected DNA samples from three men, including Bickham and Preston, from the woman's body. Her estimated blood alcohol content at the time of the rapes was 0.30 -- a near fatal level.

The case was reopened in 2009 when a DNA database of convicts linked Bickham to the then-unsolved crime. Preston's DNA was matched in 2011 to the rape.

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A third suspect, 29-year-old Orlando Ellison, of Sacramento, remains wanted on rape charges in connection with the assault.

Bickham and Preston are facing up to eight years in state prison. They are scheduled to be sentenced in January and February, respectively.